


take me home

by cupcakekillian



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M, iris west is the chosen one, lightning rod, no but seriously, the speed force is a character too, we are the flash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-27
Updated: 2018-04-27
Packaged: 2019-04-28 11:06:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14447970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cupcakekillian/pseuds/cupcakekillian
Summary: "Barry often told her that the Speed Force chose who it gave power to, that it chose seemingly every person around her to give the gift of lightning to. Iris thought that maybe it chose her too, maybe it chose her first."Iris West has a connection with the Speed Force, even if she doesn't understand it.





	take me home

**Author's Note:**

> not sure what this turned into. i have a head canon that iris has a connection with the speed force. this is an exploration into that. hasn't been beta'd so good luck :). 
> 
> check me out on tumblr: iriswestaf.tumblr.com (side blog) and emmaspirate.tumblr.com (main)

When Iris West was twelve years old she almost died. 

 

She and Barry had been playing catch in the front yard while her dad pulled weeds. It was one of those picture perfect Sunday afternoons, Barry having finally adjusted to his new life following his mother’s death. Iris found that she quite liked having him around, and the pair were quickly growing attached at the hip. It was an easy relationship, the kind that allowed even strangers to figure out that they’d been friends for years. It was a type of comfort that led to light and frequent teasing. Iris had been doing just that, telling Barry that he threw like her grandmother, which then prompted him to throw the ball as hard as he could. It went sailing over her head and landed in the street. She’d shot him a dirty look, he’d given her a smug smile, and she’d quickly run to go get the ball, not bothering to look both ways. 

 

By the time she’d registered the car barreling towards her it had been too late.

 

Everything began to move in slow motion then, as she assumed was characteristic of life or death situations. She could hear her dad screaming at her to move. She could hear the horn blaring. She could hear Barry yelling her name. None of it mattered. The car had been too close to her when she’d entered the road for anyone to change what was sure to be the horrific outcome. 

 

The driver didn’t have enough time to stop.  

 

She wasn’t fast enough to move. 

 

Something was on her then, shoving her forward so hard it left her breathless. Before she could register what was happening, she was lying on the grass across the street. The car plowed through the spot she’d been standing in and kept on driving. 

 

_ Don’t worry, Iris. We’ll protect you. _

 

“Baby!” 

 

Iris looked up to see Barry and her father running towards her as quickly as they possibly could, moving with speed she didn’t know either of them possessed. They were both crying, their faces dual masks of horror mixed with relief. “I’m okay,” She promised the pair in a shaky voice. 

 

“Iris, I’m so sorry! You almost died! I don’t know what I would have done if you had died,” Barry sobbed and he could barely get the words out. 

 

Iris stood up then, instantly putting her friend’s needs above her own. She wrapped her arms around him and he clung to her like a life preserver. “It’s okay, Barry. I’m okay.” 

 

Iris felt her dad place a hand on her back as he let out a disbelieving laugh. “You must have a guardian angel looking out for you, Baby.” 

 

She didn’t know how to tell him that she thought she may have guardian  _ angels,  _ and so she never did. 

 

**OOO**

 

Iris dreamed a lot.

 

She always had, and she’d always been the type of person to remember her dreams. They were wild, and vivid, and her dad always listened on with thinly-veiled amusement as she told them to him. She was familiar with dreaming.

 

These felt different. 

 

She couldn’t explain what it was, just that they were. They were more concrete than past dreams she’d had. They felt more real. Some of them were literal memories that she had, and she’d have chocked it up to just being that, but some of the visuals that played out before her were ones she hadn’t lived. Some were hazy; she saw water and lightning and Barry’s lips were on hers and he was kissing her with desperation and devotion. Others were rock solid; Barry with two children, one on each hip, that looked a little too much like her, and a wedding ring on his finger. 

 

Iris didn’t know what the dreams mean, or what they are. She had a suspicion, but she didn’t like to think too hard on that. She was in college, all she needed to concern herself with was getting into Tri Delta. 

 

So she shoved the word  _ memories _ aside and kept living her life. 

  
She kept dreaming too. 

  
  


**OOO**

 

Iris didn't hear the voice again for more than a decade. 

 

She'd felt uneasy the entire day, something in her gut just telling her things weren't quite right. Her father had always told her that she'd inherited his detective instincts, which inevitably prompted her to ask why she hadn't let him become a cop. That often ended any sort of conversation about the subject. Regardless, when Iris West felt like things were off, they often were. This day was no different. 

 

It was the day the particle accelerator exploded. 

 

Curiously enough, she had actually been hanging out in the area near the hospital when she heard about Barry. She didn’t have a good reason either, it was late at night and most of the shops in that area had closed down. Still, she couldn’t quite shake the feeling that it was where she was supposed to be, a feeling strong enough to compel her to drive in endless circles for hours even though she had the opening shift at Jitters. 

 

She was just about to drive home when she got the call. 

 

Because she was already practically at the hospital, Iris was the first one to arrive. Her dad had asked her why she was so close when they’d spoken briefly on the phone, but she had shrugged it off. Coincidence or not, she was grateful that she was there. She didn’t want Barry to be without his family a second longer than he had to. 

 

She didn’t realize that, for twenty horrible minutes, she would have to watch him fight for his life alone. 

 

Iris West had felt pain before. She’d seen horrible things. Yet, nothing could ever prepare her for the unabating agony she would experience that night. Her memories of that time were foggy. She knew she screamed his name. She knew she nearly got into a physical altercation with the nurse who told her she couldn’t be there. She knew she cried to the point of dehydrating herself so much she needed an IV. But above all else she remembered the pain. There were multiple times that he’d seemed on the brink of death, and she all but committed to following him to wherever he ended up. It was only when her father arrived and the first round of seizures stopped that Iris finally felt a modicum of relief. 

 

When Barry and Iris were little, her dad used to joke that there was some sort of invisible tether connecting the two of them. When Iris was sick, then Barry, for whatever reason, couldn’t seem to get out of bed. When Tony Woodward began picking on Barry, Iris started lashing out and crying more than she ever had in her entire life. They could feel each other’s pain. Barry often liked to point out that that made no scientific sense, which always caused Iris to call him a nerd and ask why he was trying to break their bond. It became something of an inside joke from there on out. When Iris had broken her arm after a drunken night in college, Barry also wore a cast. When Barry wiped out in front of Becky Cooper at the skating rink on a double date, Iris had quickly followed suit. They were a team. Then. Now. Always.

 

Nothing could ever prepare her for this. 

 

This was a whole new kind of pain. She felt like she was being turned inside out. She threw up four times that night. She fainted once. She could feel every time they shocked his chest. She could feel her heart stopping along with his. 

 

She felt like she’d been hit with a million volts of electricity. 

 

Finally,  _ finally,  _ he stabilized for the evening. Her dad asked if she wanted to go home, but she had, of course, refused. So instead he’d left her so that he could go home, shower, and update the precinct. Iris kept vigil by his beside. Sometimes she talked to him, sometimes she cried, sometimes she just held his hand and put her head down on the mattress next to him.

 

She’s staring at him, willing him to open his eyes, when she hears the voice again. 

 

_ Don’t worry, Iris. We’ll protect him.  _

 

She doesn’t know what to do. She thinks that maybe she should say something back, but she doesn’t know what. She doesn’t even know where the voice is coming from. It’s probably from her own head. 

 

She doesn’t say anything to the voice.

 

She trusts it all the same. 

 

**OOO**

  
  


Iris realizes what the voice is the first time she enters the Speed Force. 

 

They needed someone to pull Barry back from whatever precipice he was standing on. Henry had volunteered, but she knew, somehow, impossibly, that there was only person that could go in. She felt it; something intrinsic in her calling her to Barry. Calling her home. It had to be her. 

 

Cisco had said it would be hard being in there. That it was for him. That it felt unnatural. That he had to fight the whole time. She thought that it might not be that way for her.

  
She was right. 

 

It was easy for her, once she gets past the shock of going in. She couldn’t really make out anything distinct, but it was all familiar. She knew how to navigate this. She knew how to find him.

 

And she did. She found him and got him out the same way she always did, and the same way she always would. She thought maybe the Speed Force was helping her, pushing her towards him, but she couldn’t really be sure. All she knew was that she was grabbing onto him and her world was refocusing and she loved him,  _ oh god _ , she loved him with everything she had. 

 

It was only after the fact, when she could still taste lightning on her tongue, that she realized the voice had been there, had been all around her. 

 

There had been no words, but she recognized it all the same. 

 

**OOO**

 

The first time Iris West talked to the voice, she was yelling at it. 

 

She had every right to be angry. She’d been put through a lot. Flashpoint happened, she’d had her memories erased, her brother was turned into a speedster, and an evil version of Barry had tried to kill her. 

 

But Iris West kept her chin up. 

  
She always did. 

  
She couldn’t explain why she felt like everything was going to be okay. Why she hadn’t really been scared. Part of it was probably stupidity, another part probably denial, but there was also a promise of something more. She didn’t know what, but she knew her time wasn’t up. 

 

She wasn’t going to die.

 

Then Barry went into the Speed Force, and a part of her did. 

 

And she was heartbroken, of course. She felt like the earth was going to swallow her whole. She wouldn’t be mad if it did. Barry Allen was her light in a dark room and he kept being snatched from her and she was cold and alone and really tired of fighting. She had lost him so many times, it wasn’t fair. 

 

And then she wasn’t just heartbroken, she was enraged. 

 

Anger wasn’t what usually fueled her fire; she had passion for definite, but while she felt every injustice on an intimate level, she wasn’t an angry person. 

 

Right now, anger was the only thing she could find.

 

She clung to it, because it was what offered to hold her together. She felt it out as she drank directly from a bottle of Tequila she had stashed at the back of her cupboard. She’d regret it later, but she really just wanted to forget everything that had happened in the past few hours. 

 

_ You can’t take him with you.  _

 

She was screaming then, and it was a good thing that everyone had finally left her alone. She didn’t think they wanted to, but she also knew they could tell that was what she needed. She was glad they couldn’t see her like this; crazy, emotional, unhinged. She was rarely like this. There was only one person that ever saw this side of her. 

 

Barry. 

 

“Give him back,” she croaked, her voice failing her momentarily because her vocal cords were worn out from crying. “Give him back,” Iris repeated more firmly. 

 

She was met with silence. 

 

“Why me? Why is it me you keep taking from?” She was getting more worked up, her voice rising in volume. Tears were blurring her vision, but she didn’t need to see right now. She didn’t really want to. “You took Barry once, and now you’ve taken him again! You took Wally! You’ve taken my time, and my energy, and my whole damn life!” 

 

No one spoke. 

 

The tequila bottle went flying across the room and smashed into a million pieces against the wall. 

 

“You told me you’d protect him! You told me you would! How is this protecting him? How is ripping him away from me doing anyone any good?”

 

Nothing.

 

She was crying harder now, her words almost nonsensical. 

 

“I don’t know what you want from me. I don’t know… I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. Please, please just give him back.” 

 

She must’ve really been losing her damn mind, but then suddenly she could feel it. It didn’t say anything, but it was wrapping her up, enveloping her, and for the first time since he left she felt whole again. There was an affection in the embrace, a warmth that she had never experienced in her encounters with it, and she knew that the Speed Force was not a human entity, but she swore for a second she felt Barry with her. 

 

She doesn’t experience that feeling of safety, of assurance, of home, for another six months, but still she knew. 

 

It’s here. It’s always here. 

 

_ I’m ready to be Iris West-Allen. _

 

_ You always will be.  _

 

**OOO**

 

Sometimes when she dreamed he was there too. 

 

She’d figured out sometime after Flashpoint that it had, in fact, been memories she had been reliving. Some were from altered timelines, lives she’d never get to live. Others appeared to be snippets from the future, but she was never shown enough of that for it to make a lasting impression. Sometimes she saw the past, and she thinks that’s her favorite, because meeting Barry the first time had been extraordinary and she got to do it again. 

 

So the memories became routine, and she really didn’t mind. She learned to navigate and adjust and deal with seeing her life played out over and over. It was jarring at first, but Iris was nothing if not adaptable and she learned to like the break in the usual dreams of showing up to work naked. 

 

Then, without any indication, the routine breaks. 

 

She fell asleep and suddenly she was in a blue room. The blue color kind of reminds her of the Speed Force except whereas it moves with an almost violence, this is static. She wasn’t really sure what to make of it all, and she was just starting to panic when she realized she was not alone in the room. 

 

Barry was with her.

 

Except it wasn’t Barry, not her Barry anyway. 

 

This Barry was a little bit older, his hair a little bit longer. He had a little bit of stubble on his face and crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes. He wasn’t her husband, but he was. 

 

He stared at her with blatant confusion, but there was recognition there too. “Who are you?” He asked the question, but it almost seemed like he didn’t want the answer, like he wanted to figure it out himself. 

 

Iris startled, remembered that it was just a dream, that she could be hallucinating all of this no matter how real it felt, and then asked, “You don’t recognize me?” 

 

Sweet Barry, always her Barry, looked so desperate to figure out who she was she almost felt bad for him. “I know who you are I just don’t… know who you are.” 

 

She remembered then that time he came out of the Speed Force after being in there for six months. She remembered how scrambled he had been, how he’d later told her it was like time was non-linear. She wondered if maybe that was what happened to him to bring him here. 

 

“What’s the last thing you remember?” She asked. 

 

Barry worked hard for an answer, staying silent for a long time. “I… there was a man. He was fast. I was fast too. We were fighting, I think. He was wearing yellow.” 

 

“2024,” Iris blurted without thinking.

 

Barry was now more confused. “2024?” 

 

The pieces were starting to click, and she was talking a mile a minute, more to herself than to him. “2024 was the year I wrote the article. It was the year you disappeared.” 

 

“I disappear?” 

 

Iris smiled. “Yes, but I found you. We always find each other.” 

 

Barry paused, and suddenly a light turns on in his eyes and that was _ her  _ Barry. “Who are you?” 

 

“Iris.” 

 

“Iris,” he said and he smiled. “Iris,” he repeated, and he was coming back to himself, she can tell. “Iris. Home.” 

 

She woke with a start. 

 

It happened again with more frequency. She would close her eyes and wake up in the blue room and Barry would be there, waiting for her. Sometimes he recognized her instantly, sometimes she felt like she’d be in there with him for months. Sometimes he was old; her favorite incident being a time in which he had white hair and deep wrinkles and, upon seeing her, exclaimed, “You’re not going to be happy with me when I get back!” Sometimes he was young; when she was 43 he came to her shortly after he’d gone into his coma and she recalled how brutal those nine months had been. She tried to get him to remember her sooner, but she knew she couldn’t rush the process. Part of her half expected Savitar to show up somewhere along the line, but he never did and she realized that maybe that was the reason he lost his mind. She wasn’t there to get him out. 

 

Barry could never remember any of his time in the Speed Force, except, of course, for when she’d physically gone in after him. She wasn’t sure why she could, didn’t know why all of their encounters had been seared into her brain. 

 

_ You’re my lightning rod, Iris.  _

 

Then she understood. 

 

**OOO**

 

Iris West had been staring at her newborn son’s face since he came into the world 5 hours, 14 minutes, and 32 seconds ago. He had one hand wrapped around her finger, and he looked up at her with wide brown eyes that seemed to see everything. Occasionally he would coo at her and smile and every time he did Iris just about died. 

 

She loved him so much. She loved both her babies so much.

  
Iris teared her eyes away from her son to look over at her husband and newborn daughter. They were both passed out, and she would’ve been more concerned about Barry dropping the baby if he hadn’t been clutching her so tightly. He had his daughter nestled against his chest; his too long arms wrapped around her as she sat comfy in the crook of his elbow. His neck was craned down in a way that he was definitely going to regret when he woke up, but he too had been unable to not stare at his children. For her part, his daughter breathed heavily against him, already comfortable in her father’s arms. She’d told Barry when she’d been pushing a human out of her that they were not having anymore kids, but damn if the sight before her didn’t make her want to let him knock her up again. 

 

She turned her eyes back to her son as she continued to try and think of what to call them. Their legal names were already Joseph and Nora, but she didn’t really want to call them that. She wanted her kids to be able to carve out their own legacy, to make a name for themselves. I mean, at 5 hours, 19 minutes, and 14 seconds, they were already tiny history makers. 

  
The first two speedster births. 

 

At least, that was the general assumption they were going off of, because every other speedster they knew had been affected by dark matter. Her children were the first to have their powers from the second they began their lives. 

 

It terrified her. 

 

Barry had seemed more scared that the pregnancy was going to hurt her in some way, but she hadn’t been. She was tough and resilient and she knew her body could do this. No, what scared her more, and what she suspected her husband hadn’t even begun to think about, was what their lives were going to be like. 

 

What her life was going to be like.

 

Iris was surrounded by speedsters on all sides. Her brother was one, her husband was one, and now both of her children were too. The first two, and she suspected the next two, had a nasty habit of running (no pun intended) directly towards danger. It was what they did, it was who they were. Iris knew firsthand the toll it took on them mind, body, and soul. Her heart ached for the burden her children would undoubtedly have to bear. She didn’t want that for them. 

 

Still, she had learned how to adjust her expectations. 

 

But what really threatened to break her was the all too possible reality that they would all be ripped away from her. Because what none of them could understand, what no speedster really knew, was what happened to those they left behind. Iris had always been forced to stand in the burning rubble of their absence hoping that they’d return. If her children were stolen from her, she wasn’t sure she’d survive it. 

 

And yet, somewhere, deep down, she knew that she would. She knew that even as the walls caved down around her, she’d hold the ceiling up. She could do it because that was what they needed. It was what all speedsters needed. Someone to pull them back, to ground them, no matter how far or how fast they ran. That was her job. That was who she was.

 

Barry often told her that the Speed Force chose who it gave power to, that it chose every person around her to give the gift of lightning to. Iris thought that maybe it chose her too, maybe it chose her first. 

 

The Speed Force could be found in the DNA of every speedster, but Iris felt it in her too. She felt the Speed Force in her bones, she felt it in her muscle, she felt it in her heart, she felt it in every strand of hair and fingernail. The Speed Force existed in all those places that made Iris West-Allen who she was, the places that give her strength. She thought that, much like her babies, the Speed Force had been in her since she existed, just maybe not in the same way as it was in the ones she loved the most. 

 

She loved them so much. 

 

And that was just the crux of it all, wasn’t it? These people, the ones she would give everything to, needed a grounder. They needed a fixed point amidst changing timelines, and memory loss, and time remnants. They needed a safe haven, a lightning rod.

 

Iris was their home. 

 

So as she looked around the room, finally understanding her place in all of this, finally understanding why she was chosen, she whispered,

 

“Don’t worry. I’ll protect them.”


End file.
